This book argues that gems were connected to major developments in the “new science” between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Precious and semiprecious stones were at the center of dramatic shifts in natural knowledge in early modern Europe. They were used to investigate luminescence, electricity, combustion, chemical composition, and more. They were collected by naturalists; measured by mathematicians; and rubbed, burned, and dissolved by experimental philosophers. This led to the demise of the traditional way of classifying gems—which grouped them by transparency, color, and locality—and the turn to density, refraction, chemistry, and crystallography as more reliable guides for sorting these substances.
 
The science of gems shows that material evaluation was as important as material production in the history of science. It also shows the value of seeing science as the product of the interaction between different material worlds. The book begins by bringing these insights to bear on five themes of the “scientific revolution”. Each of the subsequent chapters deals with a major episode in early modern science, from the expansion of natural history in the sixteenth century to the emergence of applied science early in the nineteenth century. This important work is not only the first book-length history of the science of gems but also a fresh interpretation of the “scientific revolution” and an argument for using a new form of materialism to understand the evolution of science.

Contents

List of Abbreviations
Note on Terminology

Introduction

1. Gem Classification and Renaissance Natural History

2. Gems and Technical Writing in the Age of Louis XIV

3. Gem Collecting and Experimental Philosophy

4. Gems and the French Origins of Experimental Physics

5. Precision and Preciousness in Enlightenment Mineralogy

6. Gems, the Crafts, and Chemical Composition

7. The End of Gems and the Origins of Gemology

Conclusion

Acknowledgments
Appendix 1. Diamonds Used in the Argument of Boyle’s Gems
Appendix 2. Gem Specimens from the Regent’s Survey, 1714–1719
Appendix 3. Gems in Dufay’s Experiments
Appendix 4. Comparative Table of Enlightenment Gem Taxonomies
Appendix 5. Refraction Data from Buffon and Rochon
Bibliography
Index

Source: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo258300470.html